Now that we qualify for the rank of Avenger, we have access to more Dreadzone campaigns. So let’s complete them so that we can qualify for another match with an Exterminator.

Sometimes one just finds a weapon that feels good in the hand. For me, that’s the Scorpion Flail. What can I say? Eventually time it collides with both my enemies and the pavement with that satisfying “thud”, I get a little giddy.

I’m not sure what that says about me. Whatever the case, we now qualify to face Reactor, so we’ll start off next week with another boss fight.

By terminating the Exterminator Shellshock, we’ve qualified to challenge the Battledrome, that we may rise up to the rank of Avenger.

Team Darkstar… ASSEMBLE! For poor Coco!

Jokes aside, I actually enjoy how our villains at Vox News need to use propaganda in order to slander us because their viewers like Ratchet way more than their star, Ace Hardlight. Admittedly, we do have to stretch the world to accommodate the fact that this “black market” program in the “Shadow Sector” is marketed to children and has billions of viewers, complete with toys and other collectibles, but it’s worth it to have this little tale of corporate power and abuse in the hypercapitalist setting that has been established over three previous games.

Evidently, the Galatic Rangers aren’t doing their job very well, but that’s no surprise.

At long last, we arrive at our first boss fight against one of Vox’s Exterminators. This one calls himself Shellshock, but I’m unimpressed.

Let’s send him straight to the scrap heap!

What was most surprising to me was how little that actual boss in this boss fight mattered compared to his flunkies. Perhaps again, this is due to the heightened difficulty I’m playing on, but the adds were the only actual sources of damage I needed to be concerned about. Shellshock himself was a pushover in every round of the fight.

For once, Ace Hardlight is probably right. He should have retired years ago.

Thankfully, I was able to fix the issues we were having with Deadlocked. Although I have the Uncharted trilogy at the ready as a fallback, we’re able to continue our Dreadzone campaigns in Ratchet: Deadlocked.

I think it’s clear that the reason the enemies in my game are soaking so much damage, and dishing out about as much, is that my difficulty is set one notch above “Normal”. If it continues to be an issue, I will happily bump the difficulty down, but we’ve reached the point in building up our arsenal that we have plenty of weapons to cycle through. Ammo will soon no longer be a concern, even if damage still will.

As is always in Ratchet and Clank, the solution is just to have more and bigger guns.

The Miracle returns, and we’re Surfing its waves to victory!

Now that we’ve established how the Sera Miracle works in this deck, let’s discuss some of the reasons we play the others cards in our decklist.

Brood is in this deck for a similar reason that it was in the Cerebro deck that we played a few weeks ago. Where it gave Cerebro three 2 powered bodies that could all receive the buff, here we instead see three 3-cost bodies that can each be pumped up by the Surfer. Even if we don’t draw Sera, we can play Brood and Silver Surfer out on the final turn for a combined +15 power in one location, a swing so large that few other plays can match it. With all of the other 3-drops here, that’s likely going to be an even bigger number. For that reason, Brood is exactly as vital here as it was in Cerebro.

The other card I would consider part of the deck’s core is Bishop. Even should all else fail, our mana curve is such that we should be able to play at least one, if not two cards on turns four, five, and six. That makes it more than reasonable for a Bishop on turn 3, which we should always play if we can, to reach 6 power, or greater, over the course of a match. For 3-energy, it’s a rate that’s difficult to match.

The rest of the deck is far more flexible in terms of what we can do with it. Cosmo and Killmonger are strong techs against a number of cards and strategies. Cosmo in particular can potentially shut down enemy Leaders or similar cards. Killmonger can similarly wipe out a board of 1-drops if the games that call for it.

Iceman and Scorpion are two of the strongest 1 and 2-drops in the game, so they slot in nicely as ways to use up any extra mana we might have before and after turn 3. Combined with Cosmo, Armor can protect our Sera plays from cards that shut down ongoing effects. Polaris offers very high base stats for her cost and a strong disruption effect that can screw with our opponent’s plays, and Mr. Fantastic is mostly just another way to put stats on the board.

With this deck, you’d be surprised how often we can catch our opponents off guard and steal a ton of cubes from them.

Our time in the Dreadzone continues, as we fight for our freedom from Gleeman Vox, and his hyper-capitalistic (even by Ratchet and Clank standards) media empire.

I confess part of why I never promised to play through Deadlocked is because I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to fill the air time. Because there’s so much combat and not as many cutscenes, I didn’t know if I would have enough to talk about in order to keep up the conversation. I’m less worried about that now, but sadly my hardware appears to have other plans at the moment.

It’s truly a shame because I was finally starting to get into my groove with Deadlocked when I realized I wouldn’t be able to stream it any further until I either figure out what’s wrong with my hardware.

So for now, let’s say that this series is paused until further notice.

PS: “Further notice” ended up being a few days after I did some troubleshooting.

As my Marvel Snap collection grows, so too does my deck collection. I’ve been building and playing with tons of new archetypes as the pieces start to fall into my lap.

And most recently, I have been jamming with a deck built around Sera, Silver Surfer, and a ton of valuable three drops. It’s a new year’s miracle!

The deck I use is very similar to this build from Marvel Snap Zone, except that I don’t own Maximus so I instead have Ironheart take his place. And honestly, I don’t think I’d swap in Maximus even if I unlocked him tomorrow. Because of his colossal drawback, it’s really only correct to play him if his ability would be negated or it’s the final turn, which ends up being far more restrictive than you would think. I’ve had many games where people have misplayed Maximus and given me exactly the tools I needed to swing the match in my favor.

But that’s a separate subject from the deck itself. People who used Sera before know why decks built with her are called “Seracle” or “Sera Miracle” decks. With her ability to lower energy costs, the basic concept is to play more power on the final turn than should be otherwise possible, resulting in massive swings that are difficult for our opponents to reasonably anticipate. The exact form this “Miracle” takes depends on the deck list. Some, for example, use a 5-drop and a 3-drop, or two 4-drops, to truly take advantage of the discount.

Because Silver Surfer decks are built around mostly 3-drops, our goal is to play three 3-drops in the final turn to maximize our value. With Sera, each of them will be reduced by one energy, meaning we have exactly enough mana on turn six to pull it off. If we make the Surfer himself our final card, then when he flips up he will give all of our 3-drops, including the ones we played on that turn, +3 power. If we Snap on the turn we play Sera, we force our opponent to commit their cubes before they see what they’re about to contend with.

This element of surprise, combined with how easy the deck is to pilot, makes it incredibly powerful compared to many other deck lists. Short of cards like Leech and Leader, it’s also difficult to counter because of the various tools we have at our disposal. Played right, and we can even sneak around Leader to avoid his massive blowouts.

As for the tech we’re sporting in this build, we can talk about that another day.

I admit, when Sunday night rolled around and I knew it was streaming day, I wasn’t sure what I was going to play. Seeing Ratchet: Deadlocked on my shelf, the thought occurred to me to see if it was working, and much to my delight it was.

So let’s play my perfectly functional copy of Ratchet: Deadlocked.

Though the Ratchet and Clank fandom has rallied around this game in recent years as the underrated gem it truly was, at the time it was quite controversial because of how much it changed the formula we had all come to expect from the franchise.

In hindsight, Deadlocked should not have been so surprising, because this was the logical continuation of the trend that started with Going Commando. Over time, the series has slowly moved further away from platforming and more towards third-person shooter gameplay. Naturally, it would only be a matter of time until they made one that was almost pure combat.

To that end, this was the game that made lock-strafe the default, standard control scheme in step with the increased focus on combat. Though later games would incorporate a healthier dose of platforming, we owe Deadlocked for its role in making crafting the buttery smooth controls that we know today. Having just gone through the original trilogy, my trigger finger is happy that it no longer has to hold down one of the shoulder buttons to strafe manually. And I’m especially happy that I’m not missing shots because of awkward platforming controls like in the first game.

My first dat- I mean adventure with Nasus when well enough and fast enough on stream that we decided to go for Round 2.

So let’s bring out the flowers and champagne to make this a night to remember… wait what?

While Nasus is certainly a strong Champion on his own, the biggest benefit to having a well-rounded kit like his is that he pairs well with most of the champions you can encounter on the Path. Since, in many ways, the Path of Champions is akin to a draft, and we can’t be certain of what choices we’ll have available to us on the journey, it helps to start with a champion that can slot in other champions and their kits nicely, without clashing too much with their play style.

Case in point here with Viktor. Combined with a few choices we made early on, Viktor’s kit synergized so well with the tools our deck already had access to that our strategy basically pivoted to being completely around him while losing nothing of the utility provided by the cards we were already bringing to the table. Even better, we were able to keep Nasus in our hand in several matches, just in case we needed him to strike an enemy to neutralize a threat before it became a problem.

I’ve even had matches where the deck became a spellslinger deck with Ezreal as a second champion. Again, that works because all Nasus cares about is that you’re the one killing units, not whether or not it’s done by a spell or a creature. No matter what the strategy is, we will always want to do that.

So you better believe I’ll be taking Nasus out on more dat- ADVENTURES in my spare time.

While it’s unfortunate that Covid-19 continues to impact our daily lives, and game development timelines, the lack of major releases gave me the time to play both indie games and games that I never got around to when they came out.

This list is dedicated to the latter category. Games that I played, but were not released, this year, starting with:

Eliza

As someone who has spent most of his working years in tech, Eliza depicts an all too familiar aspect of my chosen profession in a way that feels only too real. I spend more time than I probably should thinking about how large corporations believe themselves capable of distilling important mental and emotional labor into algorithms, and how those ambitions often fell short at the cost of good people who rely on them not to.

More than that, I ponder how I would be devastated if a project I or someone I know worked on was used in such as way as to either cause harm or prevent someone who may have otherwise gotten much-needed assistance from doing so. Watching Evelyn go through those struggles in Eliza, knowing what I know about the industry in real life, hit close to home for me.

These are questions and themes that don’t come with easy answers, and sometimes we can only give our best and hope it works out.

Quantum Break

Once an Xbox One exclusive, it’s been quite some time since Quantum Break arrive on PC, and during one of the slower periods of game releases, I spent a weekend beating it. It’s clearly an artifact of a strange period in Xbox’s history, but I still had fun with my time playing it.

Though the idea of a TV show that occurs in parallel with the events of the game is fascinating, in practice it’s not all the different from a long cutscene in something like Metal Gear. Albeit, the presentation is far more appealing here than it can be in some of Kojima’s older works.

What truly kept my attention was the world and setting they had set up, alongside the rules they established for time travel. Seeing characters react to the inevitability that certain events are destined to occur because they’ve already happened, even if they happened in the future, and how that affects them, was fun both to watch and reflect on conceptually. 

It’s not much, but there is something here that a lot of us slept on, myself included.

Magic the Gathering: Arena

What can I say? They print a new version of my favorite handsome leonin planeswalker, even if they turned him evil, and I’m simping for him so much that I reinstalled the Arena client.

Unfortunately, I never actually managed to build a deck around him, and this check-in made me remember why I fell off the bandwagon in the first place. Though they’ve recently made some improvements to the Arena economy, it’s still far and away one of the worst I’ve had the displeasure of participating in, and I have played a lot of the free-to-play digital TCG clients over the years.

It became clear over the few months I returned to it that because I’m not a paying player, I am unlikely to develop the card collection required to play the decks I want because it’s far too slow and tedious to build up the wildcard needed to purchase (without trades, dusting, or refunds) the lands that I need for anything other than mono-colored decks.

When Brother’s War came out, I realized I didn’t have it in me anymore, so I just uninstalled it again. I’ve got too many games to play to let one that annoys me dominate all of my spare time.

Final Fantasy XIV

Case in point, I don’t need to play Final Fantasy XIV daily to stay current with what’s ongoing in the land of Eorzea. And yet, I log in almost every single day, not because I have to, but because I want to.

It’s been a year since Endwalker dropped, and in that time I took part in my first Savage raid static. While it fell apart due to scheduling conflicts before we could finish the third fight of the tier, I had a blast working with my team to get better at each fight. I wasn’t sure that I would enjoy higher-level content in FF XIV, because it’s a fundamentally different experience from the more casual story-based content that had been my bread-and-butter up to that point. But my experience with that raid static leaves me wondering if I might be so bold as to attempt the next upcoming tier… with randos in Party Finder!

Yeah, that’s definitely not something I would have considered this time last year. I consider it a mark of personal growth.

Hitman 3

People who frequent this place know that I can never pass up an opportunity to play more Hitman. In fact, one of the first things I did with my Steam Deck was figure out how to get the Epic Game Store working on it so I could play Hitman 3 on my couch.

Though a lot of the new additions slated for this year have been moved over to next year, like the Freelancer mode I am looking forward to playing on stream, there was a whole new map added to the game this year. Once I got the issues with my Nvidia drivers sorted out, I had a blast playing and replaying it to full map mastery as is tradition for a new Hitman drop.

And despite Freelancer’s delay, I was privileged to play the beta version of it, even if the timing didn’t align with my streams. It was enough to whet my appetite for the full version in due time.

Until then, it’s enough to open the game up again for the occasional Elusive Target or just to replay a story mission once more.

The Bouncer

I still have a difficult time believing that I convinced Acharky to join me for a run of The Bouncer, in much the same way he sat in for The Quiet Man, the dumbest game I have ever played on camera in the eleven years I have been on YouTube.

The Bouncer doesn’t eclipse The Quiet Man in terms of sheer boneheaded audacity, but it makes a good effort. Obviously, it doesn’t help that this was one of the first games Squaresoft ever developed for the PlayStation 2, but even with that context, it’s surprising that a game like this was released. I can’t be mad if The Bouncer had to crawl for the likes of Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts to run, but nor do I have to excuse it.

Still, it was more than a few laughs between Acharky, myself, and my audience, so it did more than enough for me.

Hypnospace Outlaw

A child of the 90s, I am intimately familiar with the era of dial-up internet, when websites were frequently defined less by practical design and more by gaudy, ostentatious displays that children my age considered “cool” at the time. Artifacts like the Space Jam website are living testaments to this nearly forgotten era of internet history, back when it was even more of a lawless wasteland than it is now.

Hypnospace Outlaw hearkens back to that era of the internet, and that nostalgia trip alone made it more than worth the playthrough. Playing it felt like opening a time capsule of those old single-page websites that kids like me once set up just to talk about some weird anime they liked or shitpost about how much school sucked. I didn’t realize until I was face-to-face with it how much I subconsciously missed that era before Chrome felt the need to eat up all of your CPU just to open up Twitter.

Beyond the nostalgia, they use that time capsule to tell a tale of corporate negligence, and how dire the consequences of it can be: A tale that becomes all too familiar in the wake of modern tech giants, similar to Eliza in that respect.

A friend recommended it to me, and I’m glad I took the time to check it out.

Wordle

Obviously, I was a bit late to the Wordle party, but once I started I’ve done my best to keep up with it. In my home, it’s become the activity my mother and I do each morning to see which one of us can solve today’s Wordle in as few guesses as possible.

The game is almost immaterial if I’m being honest. What I’ve found is that it’s mostly a venue for social interaction. Not just with my family, but friends who I keep in touch with to compare notes. Wordle is a great icebreaker to start up casual conversation in my neck of the woods, and I’m always down to have more of those in my pocket.

Fortnite

Similar to Wordle, Fortnite is less a game I’m interested in playing and more of a thing to do while chatting with my friends over Discord calls. I’ve tried playing it before, but I just couldn’t get into it. I was growing tired of shooting at another player only for them to build a house in front of me to block my shots.

In the advent of No Building mode, a lot of my friends have seen fit to return to the game. I resisted for a time, but when they pointed out that my favorite Marvel villain, Venom, was on sale in the Fortnite shop, I decided that it would serve as a good time to jump back into the game. Worst case, I would be out the cost of a skin.

What luck for me that it’s been so long since I’ve last played a Battle Royale that it feels fresh again. And without building as a thing I need to worry about, I’m having much more fun now than I did back then.

But honestly, it’s the company I keep that I play for. Without them, this would just be another install to delete the next time I need to reclaim space on my PC or my PS5.

Legends of Runeterra

Legends of Runeterra and Marvel Snap are the two card games I still keep up with, and it’s not difficult to pinpoint why.

Riot realized some time ago that the Path of Champions is far and away the most popular way to play Runeterra, and since then they’ve been doing good work adding more to the mode to keep it fresh and interesting. Recently, they added my favorite champion, Nasus, to it, and that’s been great for me since I’m always happy to bonk enemy champions with his signature Syphoning Strike.

Beyond the single-player offerings, Runeterra remains one of the most generous card economies I’ve ever been a part of in the space of digital TCGs. Until the latest card update, I had a 100% complete collection of full playsets of every card in the game, and I’m well on my way to achieving that again, all without spending a single dime. (On cards: Cosmetics are a different story.)

I’m happy to login in every day just to do one Path of Champions campaign over my lunch break, and I doubt that will change anytime soon.

——-

With that, I’ve gone over all the big highlights of the year that weren’t released this year. Personally, professionally, and in games, 2022 was a year of profound positive change in my life, and I hope you had a similar experience. Cheers to 2022, and may the next year be gentle to us all.